


Children's Crusade

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Depressing, Double Drabble, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Harm to Children, Ninja, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-25
Updated: 2009-08-25
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:18:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2288240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A musing on the social and legal construction of childhood in hidden villages. Downbeat and philosophical. Double drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Children's Crusade

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the 5/11/09 word #110 on [15_minute_fic](http://15_minute_fic.livejournal.com). It can be read as a companion to [Traps](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2288228) \-- in other words, have some more morbid thoughts about the social and legal construction of childhood in a culture where children are often raised to be assassins and disposable front-line soldiers.

Legally, shinobi are not children.

Once people pass the academy exit tests and are accepted by a jounin-sensei, they are adults, no matter how young. They pay taxes. They enter binding contracts. They gain a voice in clan councils and village politics.

They fight. They kill. They bleed. They die. If they fall or if they fail, they are tried and sentenced with no cushion for youthful idiocy and inexperience.

Shinobi hold the power of life and death over themselves and civilians. No child should hold such responsibility. No child should make such choices.

Therefore, no child does.

But little fingers are deft. Youthful optimism and gullibility send disposable troops into the thick of battle. Inexperience drives innovation. High voices, large eyes, and round faces disarm and distract opponents for crucial seconds. Children are too valuable not to use.

So girls become women and boys men at twelve, at eleven, at seven, at six. They live on the edge between life and death. By the time they are adults in physical truth as well as legal fiction, more than half of them are dead: in body, in mind, in soul.

Shinobi are not children. But far too few grow up.

**Author's Note:**

> ...Clearly the whole 'training children to be killers' aspect of _Naruto_ bothers me on a deep level, since I keep turning back to it directly or indirectly. I wish Kishimoto would address that more in canon.


End file.
